


An Echo of Emptiness

by Crimsoncat



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: F/F, Heavy Angst, Implied Femslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-19
Updated: 2013-09-21
Packaged: 2017-12-27 01:34:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/972760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crimsoncat/pseuds/Crimsoncat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is me, imagining the worst. Pete and Helena, afterwards.</p><p>What was supposed to be just a one shot to get this horrific thought out of my head has turned into a collection of sorts. I don't know if I'm done with it. There may be more to come.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. i.

**Author's Note:**

> So. I'm currently operating on three hours of sleep. I also read a lot of horrifically sad fanfic this morning. This isn't great, and I apologize. But I was rubbed raw this morning, and this was the result. Pete and Helena, after Myka has gone.

Pete had been sitting there, head tilted back and eyes on the sky, for longer than he cared to think about. The sun had come and gone, but still he stayed. He couldn't stomach the thought of leaving her here. _Alone._ Rationally, Pete knew his partner wasn't here anymore. Myka was long gone. Hopefully to a place better than this one. A place filled with books and her favorite reading chair. Myka wasn't laying in the grave he couldn't bring himself to leave. He knew that. He did. But Pete couldn't bring himself to get up and go. So instead he sat and watched the stars.

It was awhile before Pete realized he wasn't alone. He was lost in memories of his partner. His best friend. He was trying to figure out how he was supposed to get up and leave her here. So it took awhile. But he did notice, eventually. Pete turned his head, not at all surprised to see her standing there. His movement caught her attention, and she turned to look at him. The look on her face mirrored the one on his own.

"She asked us not to call you." Pete said in way of greeting.

"How long.." Helena's voice was strained. There was an echo of madness in her eyes that Pete hadn't seen since she'd been hauled away by The Regents so many years ago.

"A few months. It was.. fast." Pete turned his attention back to the stars, taking a deep breath. "It was too fast."

Helena, hand desperately clutching the locket at her neck, released a sound that Pete would never be able to describe. Turning back towards her, he watched her fall to the ground in front of the fresh grave. She was disintegrating before his eyes. Pete felt like he should be worried. Helena had been driven mad by her grief in the past. She'd tried to cover the world in ice and snow and death. Pete knew he should do something. Say something. **Anything**. But he couldn't bring himself to worry about the world ending. He didn't know how to live in a world without Myka.

For just a moment, one brief second, he wished for it. He wished for an insane H.G Wells to end this. To destroy the world so he wouldn't have to figure out getting through each day. Never mind figuring out how to stand up and _walk away_  from Myka's grave. For just a split second he watched Helena fall apart and prayed for the worst. But only for one brief moment. Because Pete could easily picture Myka standing there with them. Horrified and demolished by the sight of Helena so completely ruined. He could feel the punch she'd give his shoulder. It would hurt, because she would be **furious** with him.

Pete found himself kneeling beside Helena with no real memory of moving. He wrapped his arms around her, his grip tightening when she tensed. It didn't last long. Just a few heartbeats, before Helena sagged against him.

"I would have been here." Helena murmured. "I would have _been here_. Why? Why wouldn't she.."

"She didn't want you to watch her die." Pete answered softly.

Helena didn't have a response for that. A few minutes passed before she spoke again. "What are we supposed to do now?" Her voice was defeated and broken. She sounded the way Pete felt.

"I don't know." He replied honestly.

They stayed there until the sun rose. Helena was the one to stand, to pull Pete to his feet, and lead him from the grave yard. It was easier to leave with the sun shining brightly above them. Easier to leave knowing he wasn't leaving her alone in the dark. He stopped at the path, right before the bend that would take him out of sight of her grave.

"Do you think she'll be ok here?" Pete's voice was small. Helena took his hand and squeezed it tightly, drawing his gaze away from Myka's final resting place.

"Myka isn't here, Pete." Helena spoke softly, her voice raw.

Pete nodded. And with one last look back, he allowed Helena to pull him around the bend in the path. They would never visit her grave again. Because the woman they both loved so fiercely couldn't be found there. Myka was in the rustling of book pages. She was in the warehouse, laughing at Pete's antics. She was in the kitchen, sharing a cup of tea with Helena before the day began. She was in the garden, face turned towards the sun, eyes closed, and smiling.


	2. ii.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's like a wound I can't stop picking at. This one is a bit darker than the first. Helena and Pete, after the fact. Take two.

Pete slouched against the bench, no energy left in his body. It had been the longest week of his life. It felt like he'd aged a decade in the past 7 days. Everyone else was long gone. Back to the warehouse, back to their lives. But Pete stayed. Because he didn't know where he was supposed to go. He couldn't imagine a life to go back to. Not when his other half, his _better_  half, was laying six feet under. Myka had become such a part of him. He would have rather lost an arm. A leg. How the hell was he supposed to do this? Pete leaned forward, his head falling into his hands as he sobbed.

This wasn't how it was supposed to happen. He'd joked about them going out together. It was a running gag that got them through the rough patches. But Pete had always believed Myka would out live him. She was too smart, too careful, to be brought down by an artifact. She was also too vital to his world view. Pete could simply never bring himself to imagine a world without her in it. This wasn't the game plan.

It had killed him to watch her slowly fade away. Every day there was a little less of Myka there when he woke. Pete felt like he'd been gutted. Like someone had slit him from groin to sternum and left him standing there with his insides pooling at his feet. That was a world without Myka. The only thing keeping him from the local bar was the knowledge that she would be so disappointed. So heartbroken to have her death be the one thing he couldn't survive sober.

He ran out of tears after awhile. But he continued to sit there like that. Head in his hands, eyes closed, heart stuttering in his chest. It was only a soft sniffle that made his eyes open. His head tilted in his hands to regard the woman standing a few steps away.

Helena looked like the world had ended. She looked like the world needed to end. She looked lost and afraid and alone, and it was all Pete could do to not stand up and strangle her. His vision went white for a minute, and he had to swallow back the rage building in his chest.

Myka had begged him not to call her. At the very beginning, when they still thought it was something she would survive, she'd told them not to call her. And then later, when the test results and doctors started predicting an outcome Pete couldn't wrap his mind around, she begged him. Because Helena was trying to find some measure of peace in the world. Because Myka couldn't bear to have Helena witness her slow decay. And Pete had agreed. He would have agreed to anything. He would have _done_ anything. So, no one called her.

Her name had been the last word to fall from Myka's lips. He'd been sitting by her bed, clutching her hand hard enough to bruise. It was Pete's turn to beg, and he was pleading with everything he had for Myka to stay with him. She'd just smiled and squeezed his hand. Or, she tried to. Pete felt her muscles trying to. It was enough. It was all Myka had left to offer him.

"I love you, you know." Myka told him, so soft he had to strain to hear her.

"I love you too, Mykes. I love you **so** much." His grip tightened, desperate to keep her tethered to this world. To this body that was betraying her.

She looked so small, so sad, laying there. Swallowed by blankets and pillows. Pete reached out and smoothed the furrow on her brow. Myka leaned into the touch.

"She'll never forgive me for this." Myka sighed. "Helena.."

The inhale never came, though Pete waited for it. He held his own breath so he wouldn't miss it. That beautiful perfect sound of her lungs filling with air. He waited until his own lungs started burning. Pete inhaled with a gasp. He exhaled a scream that brought the rest of them running into Myka's room.

Her last thought had been of a woman that destroyed her more often than not. A woman who'd abandoned her time and time again. Myka had left with such worry and concern for her, and Pete hated Helena for it. Irrationally, he blamed Helena for taking that one last thing from his partner. He hated her for being the one Myka was worried about. Because what about him? How was Pete supposed to get up and breathe and eat and go on with his days without her?

Pete opened his mouth, ready to reduce her to rubble with just his words and his rage. But Helena turned to look at him, and the expression on her face made his fury sputter and die. The expression on her face reminded him of one very important thing. This woman loved Myka as much as he did. In a very different way, but just as much. Helena's expression matched his own. That shell shocked and hollow look that he saw in the mirror each morning since Myka had left him here alone. She looked as confused and lost as he felt.

Helena took a step towards him, but never made it. She stumbled, tripping over the grass and her own feet. Staggering under the weight of her grief as it knocked her to the ground. She didn't get up. She just sat there, in the grass, sobbing.

They would eventually pull themselves together. They would lean on one another and help each other through it. And Myka would be so proud, so happy to know they were there for one another. That they didn't have to suffer alone. Eventually, they would both get up and stumble from the graveyard. Eventually.

But for now, for this moment, they just sat there. Helena on the ground, Pete on his cold bench. For now, they lingered in this special hell reserved for them alone. They lingered, and they cried, and they tried to remember to keep breathing. Eventually they would find their way home. But for now it was enough to sit there, together, and mourn her. It was enough.

For now, it was all they could do.

　

_[She] was my North, my South, my East and West,_   
_My working week and my Sunday rest,_   
_My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;_   
_I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong._

_The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,_   
_Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,_   
_Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;_   
_for nothing now can ever come to any good._

_\- W.H Auden, Funeral Blues_


	3. Faded Memories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes they forget things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be just a one shot. It's turning into a thing. There may or may not be more.

There are times that Helena is caught off guard by certain shades of green. Fresh cut grass, for example. And certain soda bottles. Because they serve as painful reminders that she cannot recall the exact shade of Myka's eyes. Were they brilliantly green, like emeralds? Smokey like jade? Did they shimmer the way plant leaves did, wet with morning dew? Dark like an olive? Moments like this, Helena can feel herself dancing along the edge of madness. Because there are  ** _so many_**   different shades. Mint and apple and lime. A green caterpillar had once brought her to her knees. Someone will usually find her, pacing a groove into the floor of her bedroom, as she tries so desperately to recall. Photographs don't help. Even with their explosion of color, it isn't enough. It isn't reliable. She once begged Pete, pleaded with him, to remind her if Myka's eyes had flecks of any kind. Helena regretted it instantly. She could tell by the way he paled that he didn't remember either.

For one brief, incredibly selfish and cruel moment, Helena felt a stab of satisfaction at his pain. Because six weeks earlier Pete had come to her asking what Myka's laugh sounded like. Helena had thought the sound would be burned into her memory. Engraved on her heart. It had been one of her favorite things. But she couldn't recall. They had spent three sleepless days and nights frantically searching for something, anything, that had captured it. A voice mail. A video. An artifact.

Artie had found them demolishing the warehouse, looking for a curiosity that could recreate it. He hadn't yelled at them, hadn't lost his temper. He simply guided them back to the office, sat them down, and asked them to wait. Artie returned 10 minutes later with a record player that let the listener hear their favorite sound. The drawback? However long they listened, it would rob their hearing for eight times that once they stopped. Artie made the mistake of leaving them alone there. He couldn't afford to go deaf. Having experienced it once before at the hands of an artifact, he wasn't eager to relive the experience. They let him have his excuse, and didn't call him on it. The truth was it would kill Artie as much to hear it as it was killing them not to. _They were deaf for three days._

Claudia was the one to save them this time. After a week of fruitless searching for something, anything, that would recreate the color of Myka's eyes, Claudia found them. They were in the kitchen at the time, the long dinging room table filled to overflowing with every picture they could find. Though they were frantically shuffling through the images, they were always careful not to bend or tear them. Pete and Helena made sure to stack each photo carefully once it had been examined, compared, discussed, and discarded. The thought of one falling to the floor and being damaged, or worse lost, was unbearable.

After a few minutes of trying to get their attention, and failing, Claudia dropped a strip of cloth on the table between them. Two pairs of eyes snapped to the cloth as it came to rest on one of their stacks of photos. It was perfect. Helena sobbed with relief as she picked up the fabric.

"Gold." Claudia murmured. "Her eyes were that exact shade of green, but flecked with gold."

Helena stood and embraced her wordlessly. There weren't any words she could give the younger woman to express how grateful she was for this simple piece of cloth. So she just folded Claudia in her arms and hugged her as tight as she could. Pete scrambled up and threw his arms around them both, eager to get in on the hug. Claudia clung to them equally.

The other members of their warehouse family were constantly doing things like that. When Pete, or Helena, or both of them, were struck with a paralyzing inability to remember some aspect of Myka, they were there to remind them. Together, working as a team, they were able to hold onto all the tiny details that made Myka so extraordinary. Between them, the warehouse family was able to keep Myka's memory alive. It was painful somedays. But it kept Pete and Helena sane. Eventually the day would come when none of them would be able to recall. Enough time would eventually pass that some things would fall by the wayside. Pete and Helena lived in constant fear of that day when the group memory would fail them. But the important thing was that it hadn't yet. And until that day came, they were forever thankful for every lost piece of Myka that their friends could return to them.


End file.
